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CC. Chapter 5: Slave Clothing

Page 1

[CHAPTER 5]
[Page 1]
SLAVE CLOTHING
The clothing of Louisiana slaves was at best a nondescript hodgepodge throughout the antebellum period. In 1792 Baron de Carondelet issued a proclamation in which certain demands were made for the “humane treatment of slaves.” He ordered that each slave must receive “Two brown shirts, a woolen coat and pantaloons, and a pair of linen pantaloons, and two handkerchiefs, to be allowed, yearly, to each male slave, and suitable dresses to female.”1 That free and slave males assisted some slave women in procuring “suitable dresses,” may be found in the record of the Spanish courts of 1781, concerning the robbery of a drygoods store. The Negro slave, Pedro, implicated in the robbery, gave the material stolen from the store to Angelica, a slave woman, who had her mistress to make the cloth into dresses and petticoats. In his testimony the slave admitted that he gave his sweetheart “other colored and striped petticoats...besides a coarse linen chemise.” The woman, whom the slave referred to as his wife, took a cut of the yellow material he had brought to her and used some of the coarse thread--also stolen--to make the cloth into a dress. After she had made the dress, “she put on one of the handkerchiefs,” which attracted the attention of the merchant and this proved the undoing of her lover.2
To give the slave a plot of ground where he could raise marketable vegetables and live stock was apparently considered an equivalent of money by the Black Code. It ruled that masters must give to each male slave one linen shirt and pantaloons for

The unpublished manuscript "The Negro in Louisiana" is a work begun by the Dillard (University) Project in 1942, an arm of the WPA's Federal Writer's Project. After the dissolution of the unit, Marcus Christian maintained and edited the document in hopes of eventual publication. It is reproduced here as an annotated transcript, with original typos, chapters, and paginations preserved.

[CHAPTER 5]
[Page 1]
SLAVE CLOTHING
The clothing of Louisiana slaves was at best a nondescript hodgepodge throughout the antebellum period. In 1792 Baron de Carondelet issued a proclamation in which certain demands were made for the “humane treatment of slaves.” He ordered that each slave must receive “Two brown shirts, a woolen coat and pantaloons, and a pair of linen pantaloons, and two handkerchiefs, to be allowed, yearly, to each male slave, and suitable dresses to female.”1 That free and slave males assisted some slave women in procuring “suitable dresses,” may be found in the record of the Spanish courts of 1781, concerning the robbery of a drygoods store. The Negro slave, Pedro, implicated in the robbery, gave the material stolen from the store to Angelica, a slave woman, who had her mistress to make the cloth into dresses and petticoats. In his testimony the slave admitted that he gave his sweetheart “other colored and striped petticoats...besides a coarse linen chemise.” The woman, whom the slave referred to as his wife, took a cut of the yellow material he had brought to her and used some of the coarse thread--also stolen--to make the cloth into a dress. After she had made the dress, “she put on one of the handkerchiefs,” which attracted the attention of the merchant and this proved the undoing of her lover.2
To give the slave a plot of ground where he could raise marketable vegetables and live stock was apparently considered an equivalent of money by the Black Code. It ruled that masters must give to each male slave one linen shirt and pantaloons for